Ann Hornaday

Slow going, but it provides an absorbing glimpse of a rarely seen side of Chinese life.

By turns funny, affecting tale.

There's nothing wrong with the moral of The Ultimate Gift's story; in fact there's everything right about it. But director Michael O. Sajbel too often succumbs to movie-of-the-week sentimentality and starchy pacing. Still, Breslin's captivating performance reminds you why she was recently nominated for an Oscar.

There's no doubt that Eminem has the talent and presence of a star. It's just a shame that the filmmakers didn't capture his power with mad skillz of their own.

Like Gervais, the audience wants to see a struggle, which here comes down to whether unvarnished honesty or random acts of compassionate deceit will win the day. That alone makes for entertainingly high stakes.

Hollywood loves the heroics of good intentions, but this movie is just as interested in the road to hell.

Often possesses the gimlet-eyed wit of "The Player" or the mock docs of Christopher Guest.

In Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore largely stays out of the picture, and the film is the better for it. But otherwise his style hasn't changed.

Bobby, even if it suffers from a few silly scenes, gets more right than it does wrong.

The compulsively watchable Owen makes for an ideal leading man of both action and angst. The film's eye-popping set piece, a shootout at the Guggenheim Museum, is an extravagantly choreographed valentine to philistines everywhere.

Becker handles the film's comedy with fluency.

Until those final moments, Flightplan succeeds admirably, both as a sophisticated psychological thriller and as an example of, if not great art, then superb craftsmanship.

A gorgeous, if disjointed, spectacle, made endurable – if not entirely comprehensible – by its eye-popping cast.

A wartime epic in the most flamboyant, operatic tradition of the genre.

Paris, je t'aime builds into something quite wonderful.

The main reason to see Criminal isn't for the mental workout it might offer but simply to watch these two appealing performers act and act and act.

Smarter and more poignant than the average chick flick.

These two generate real, slow-burning rapport, so that you're still pulling for them even during a gratingly preposterous climax.

Bernhard Schlink's highly regarded novel "The Reader" receives a graceful, absorbing screen adaptation by director Stephen Daldry.

The movie's sweet, gentle nature may lack the subtle irony of the "Toy Storys" and "Shreks" of the world, but parents won't be bored.

But by far the most powerful element is N'Dour's lone voice, a thing of high, pure beauty that feels at once ancient and new. When he sings, an otherwise earnestly conventional film becomes a vehicle of incantatory power.

Music video director Simon Brand makes an impressively taut debut with Unknown, a nifty little psychological crime thriller that suggests a "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" for the postindustrial age.

By turns fascinating, puzzling and troubling -- a deeply felt account of the varieties of religious experience but also a thoroughly uncritical apologia for fanaticism.

If Casa de los Babys isn't necessarily a fully realized film, it's still a deeply felt glimpse into dizzyingly complex political and psychological forces that shape the most crucial decisions of a woman's life.

At a time when the action genre has come to be dominated by sleek, matte surfaces and set-'em-and-forget-'em computerized effects, Live Free or Die Hard seeks to remind viewers of the simple, nostalgic pleasures of watching stuff get blown up and bad guys get smoked.

Creadon and his editor, Douglas Blush, add verve to an otherwise talky exercise by cutting Wordplay as if it were a puzzle itself, with Across and Down camera moves and blocks of black space. A visual pun altogether worthy of those being filled in on screen.

Manages to navigate the era of cellphones and Mean Girls with retro nostalgia and wholesomeness, making it a rare girl-powered outing for tweens in an otherwise guy-centric summer.

Argento and Aattou deliver appropriately outsize performances to fit the movie's sense of extravagant escapism, and Claude Sarraute delivers a slyly witty performance as the elderly lady carried away by Ryno's Scheherazade-like tale.

It's a fun ride, and the big payoff -- that history turns out to be way cooler than its reputation suggests -- is even more gratifying. Bully!

See Darfur Now, and you won't read the daily news the same way again.

A shorter version of which was shown last year in a series of house parties sponsored by the anti-Bush organizations MoveOn.org and the Center for American Progress -- Greenwald marshals dozens of impeccably credentialed witnesses to debunk the case made for going to war.

A poignant portrait of one woman who has loved and lost, and another who never had a love to lose.

The dopest thing about The Wackness is Thirlby, who, after supporting turns in "Juno" and "Snow Angels," is quickly becoming reason enough to see any film she's in.

It's as predictable and comforting as a Happy Meal, but it must be said that The Proposal manages to elicit some genuinely amusing moments.

The power of this quiet little film lies in the lyricism of its images of life on Bangladesh's waterways and in its towns...and in the naturalistic performances from its cast of mostly nonprofessional actors.

Uma Thurman delivers a mesmerizing performance in The Life Before Her Eyes, a film that, once seen and fully digested, exerts the same haunting pull as the shattering events it chronicles.

Clara Khoury delivers a performance that is luminous, fierce and intensely focused as the title character of Rana's Wedding.

May not be for everyone, but filmgoers tuned in to its particular, perverse frequency will find much to value in its bent sense of humor and compassion.

Arriving on the nastier heels of the horror comedy "Jennifer's Body," Whip It plays like that movie's more wholesome twin, delivering the same jolt of anarchic guerrilla-girl empowerment, only with a far less threatening disposition.

A sweet, even delectable diversion from the more explosive cinematic fare of the season.

Winds up being a touching portrait of that rarity in the movies: a recognizably human couple with recognizably human problems and quirks.

Always predictable in its outcome, but it still retains a certain charm, mostly because of Meadows's cheerful sympathy and affection for his motley crew of characters.

Watching Spacek dance around the bedroom, slowly loosening up while Laura Nyro plays, is one of the joys of this cinematic season.

The Darjeeling Limited"has its charms, chief of which is watching three terrific actors evince with unforced ease the rewards and resentments of brotherhood.

With its urgent post-9/11 context and often brutal violence, it seems off-key to describe Body of Lies as a nifty political thriller, but that's what it is.

With surprisingly good production values and sly, underhanded wit, Willmott never tips his hand, steadily guiding the satire to a genuinely stunning, back-to-reality conclusion.

It's less a movie than a delivery system for sensory pleasures, sunny romance and designer-label stuff that in real life would result in diabetic shock (or at least a ruined credit rating).

Spiked with some genuine show-stopping musical numbers, and the sheer pluck of its young cast is nothing if not admirable.

A star isn't born in El Cantante as much as it's reconfirmed. She's still here, and she's still got it.

Follows the youngsters over the course of a tumultuous year, during which time Cuesta and screenwriter Anthony Cipriano succeed in making the audience care desperately whether they're okay and whether the adults in their lives do the right thing. The lingering question is why that should be so improbable.

You won't be disappointed, and you will be deeply, quietly moved.

Thanks to an accomplished cast, anchored by Elsner and Wepper, and observant filmmakers, very little in Cherry Blossoms is lost in translation.

A joy to watch.

At a time when the country is engaged in fresh debates about the fragile relationship between privacy and national security, this particular chapter seems worth revisiting.

The movie's chief value is to preserve Phoenix at the height of his wary physical grace, which recalls a young Marlon Brando.

An interlocking ensemble piece in the tradition of "Crash" and "Babel," but with welcome dashes of whimsy and magical realism.

Abrams keeps the action clicking along in 5/8 time, and Cruise is at his scowling/smiling best as he jumps, shoots and leaves. (See Tom run! Run, Tom, run!) Best is Philip Seymour Hoffman as the baddie; the film's best sequence features him playing Cruise playing him at a swank party in Vatican City.

No one can deny the powerful reality that weaves its way through Bamako.

May not be the most nutritious movie on the table, but it lives up to its sweet promise.

It's impossible to watch Defiance without experiencing a vicarious thrill of resistance and revenge.

Offers audiences a real rarity in theaters these days: a good, honest cry.

An often lively investigation of the social forces that produced the original movie and made it an unlikely political shibboleth in the ongoing culture wars.

Stardust has it all: sweetness, magic, lusty wenches, evil witches, tankards of mead, a gay pirate.

It will all look pretty ridiculous to grown-ups, but to 13-year-old boys (and adults with well-tended inner versions thereof), Biker Boyz will be the perfect testosterone-fueled, flash-edited, music-driven joy ride.

Harrowing, controlled and diabolically self-assured, Joshua leaves filmgoers teetering on their own emotional precipice, wondering just where pathos ends and pathology begins.

Clocking in at two hours-plus, Glastonbury at times gives viewers the impression that they're slogging through the three-day plunge into mud, music and madness themselves. But for all the posers with light sticks and piercings, there are moments of Dada-esque beauty, not to mention some great music.

Garden State features some wonderful performances, chief among them an engaging, even courageous turn from Natalie Portman.

Savages is a B-movie striving for an A-plus, a decadently energetic summer escape with bloody action, bold visuals and bodacious attitude to burn.

The Salt of the Earth remains worshipful when it should be more probing, especially around questions of ethics, privacy and consent.

Like its protagonist, The Idol finds a sense of identity, hope and pride within a landscape of grim dispossession and fatalism.

The wispy premise of Newlyweeds, written and directed by Shaka King, is kept afloat by its attractive, youthfully vital cast (along with some well-timed comic relief by way of some familiar faces).

Nominally, The Light Between Oceans refers to the beacon’s location at the geographic point where the Indian and Pacific meet, but it could just as easily be a hint at the salty tears it’s been so carefully manufactured to induce. Ladies and gentlemen, let your hankies unfurl.

The jittery, scattershot camerawork of Greengrass's longtime cinematographer, Barry Ackroyd, was used far more coherently in Kathryn Bigelow's Oscar-winning "The Hurt Locker," and the constant blurry close-ups of computer screens and street-level scrums lose their power with each successive cut.

Due Date isn't pretty; in fact, it gets kind of ugly. But, at least in the eyes of certain beholders, therein lies its peculiar, bent beauty.

The story is so nasty, so depraved and troubling, that viewers may well wonder at its value beyond prurient interest.

At its best, The Tree of Life makes the viewer lean forward, eager to enter Malick's own dreamy, poetic consciousness. At worst, it leads to the vague feeling that we're listening to the meanderings of someone who's not sure we're smart enough to keep up.

What makes The Rover more watchable than the average self-conscious genre exercise is Pearce, who exudes such weary authority and palpable vulnerability that he’s sympathetic even in the film’s most brutalizing moments.

A tough movie to love.

A carefully conceived and earnest movie that announces its many points just a bit too carefully and earnestly.

One Day often seems too tame for its own good, as if its spirited protagonists were censoring themselves in deference to a PG-13 rating.

By now, it must be said, the quips are beginning to wear a little thin, the vinyl-era needle drops a little less cool, the quotation marks a little more obvious among the ironic references and self-mocking bonhomie. Still, Thor: Love and Thunder is out for a good time, even if the journey doesn’t feel quite so novel or giddily buoyant.

It’s a movie drenched in catchy pop hooks and aspirational romance. If this iteration doesn't quite achieve the full liftoff of the best of the form, it still manages to hit more than a few pleasure centers as a summery slice of light escapism.

Nuts!”is an intriguing, if patronizing, curio from the cabinet of American arcana, a geegaw from the collective attic that, when dusted off, looks grotesquely funny in the light of today. We wonder how anyone could buy it. Just imagine what, one day, they’ll say about us.

It’s impossible to dismiss von Trier as merely a hype-monger. He’s too damnably good a filmmaker for that. Watching Nymphomaniac is to be reminded of his superb skills in creating vivid worlds and characters on screen.

It’s certainly a movie nobody asked for, as Marvel itself acknowledges. But it’s here. And it’s just fine.

As a director, Penn knows how to create arresting tableaus that draw the eye and spark the viewer’s own sensory past. As an actor, no one is better at finding honesty in the moment. Like the antihero at its center, the essence of Flag Day remains tantalizingly elusive, potently evoked but never fully realized.

Eat Pray Love finally settles into its own cinematic destiny as an attractive escapist love story, in which the romance is more with the I than with the guy.

The problem with Hyde Park on Hudson isn't its suggestion of FDR's dark side. That complexity, and Murray's spot-on portrayal of a man juggling myriad pressures and demands, from petty to momentous, marks one of the film's greatest strengths. It's that Daisy rarely comes into her own as more than the pliant emotional helpmeet to the Great Man.

Helped immensely by a lush and poignant musical score by Joe Hisaishi, Fireworks makes a quietly powerful impact. [22 May 1998]

A super-stoked action thriller

There's a place in the movies for wish fulfillment, no doubt, including the wish for it all to be over.

In its own messy, slightly ungovernable way, this digressive bagatelle feels looser than some of Anderson’s most tightly controlled mis-en-scenes. But the story, for all its busyness, is negligible. The script feels less like an organic whole than an effort to keep building up a scrawny central premise until it felt like a movie.

Epitomizes the kind of somber, aesthetically refined and morally engaged film that commands deep respect without inspiring much affection.

The result is a movie that, while no classic, can be credited with giving the audience something a bit more substantive than the usual disposable summer fare.

Benefits from a sensitive, even-tempered tone, as well as terrific supporting performances from Spencer, Ann Dowd (as Alex’s status-obsessed mom) and a scene-stealing Amy Landecker, who plays an ambivalent therapy client of Greg’s.

A lyrical, mysterious and provocative meditation on the power of memory and narrative, After Life is a fascinating speculation on life and death -- until its plot takes a turn so melodramatic that the spell is broken. [20 Aug 1999, p.3E]

An uneven, if lively, diversion.

There are moments when Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris resembles the cinematic equivalent of nursery food: over-egged but soothing, and perhaps a much-needed respite from a world in danger of spinning off its axis.

Resourceful, if occasionally forced, teen melodrama.

Omar feels as trapped and enmeshed in hopelessness as the vicious political cycle it depicts.

While Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski haven't necessarily expanded on Mitchell's book, they've done a superlative job making it legible onscreen. Cloud Atlas deserves praise if only for not being the baggy, pretentious disaster it could have been in other hands.

A handsome-looking if occasionally dull affair.

Helped by director Hany Abu-Assad and spectacular cinematography by Mandy Walker, who makes the most of the film’s British Columbia locations, Elba and Winslet generate chemistry that is convincing in direct proportion to the story’s outlandishness.

The story's more sober elements are regularly leavened by hip visual flourishes and even some quiet comedy.

As a thriller channeling the deepest anxieties of its era, however, How to Blow Up a Pipeline feels urgently, unmistakably of its time.

It's not meant to be scary. It's meant to be Disney -- a fun and warm children's fantasy.

A loving throwback to the classic westerns and sci-fi adventures of yore, this celebration of two of cinema's most revered genres doesn't stint in lavishing their most cherished conventions with even-handed affection and respect.

Burlesque delivers eyeful after eyeful of rapid-fire opulence and spectacle. But its most memorable sight is the indelible image of one star taking flight, and another triumphantly staying put.

Begin Again may not always swing, but it makes up for that in sincerity and a welcome willingness to ambush expectations.

The Road possesses undeniable sweep and a grim kind of grandeur, but it ultimately plays like a zombie movie with literary pretensions.

Subtlety may not be the film’s strong suit, but it creates a richly imagined world, as glitteringly arresting as it is savagely merciless.

Still, despite some distracting contrivances, Summer of 85 transports viewers to a place, time and feeling that feel altogether real, and not nearly as far away as they initially might seem.

This intimate, straightforward, often wrenching portrait of five families dealing with bullying and its aftermath doesn't hold many surprises at a time when such campaigns as "It Gets Better" and special programming on kids' cable networks are bringing the issue to the fore.

Footloose never needed to be dragged into the 21st century, but Brewer has made it look and sound a little bit more like the real world.

Even at its most wrenchingly painful, the film readily delivers generous dollops of pleasure.

As gratifying as it is that Johansson has finally gotten the movie her character has long deserved — not to mention a worthy and equally watchable foil in Pugh — “Black Widow” simultaneously feels like too much and too little. Do svidaniya, Natasha — we hardly knew ye.

While qualifying as the most gorgeously appointed and finely detailed version of the novel so far, still lacks the element of essential fire to make it come fully, even subversively, to life.

Buried inside this grab bag of hits and misses is a pretty good point about the descent of television news into a miasma of 24/7 speculation, fluff and, most of all, hype.

In a way, The Overnight ends just as it’s beginning. But for a brief time, even in the midst of preposterous digressions and full (and not so full) Montys, it offers a compassionate glimpse of people at their most naked, honest and undefended.

The wine Coogan and Brydon are opening this time may lack some of the novel fizz of the first one, but The Trip to Italy is like most vacations: a few bumps here and there, but over all too quickly.

Sensory pleasures abound in Black Nativity, which is grounded by Forest Whitaker and Angela Bassett’s performances as Langston’s strict, God-fearing grandparents.

Depends on breezy attitude and effortless delivery for its success.

Risk raises deep misgivings about its subject and its maker. But it’s still queasily, compulsively watchable — and probably necessary, if only as a cautionary example of how ethics, objectivity and agendas come into play in nonfiction filmmaking.

It’s a joyless, surpassingly dour enterprise, but one that fulfills its mission with Katniss’s own eagle-eyed efficiency and unsentimental somberness.

Even a character as sincere and innocently wise as Marcel isn’t above fan service, even if it means taking a sweetly captivating idea an inch too far.

Will Smith and Margot Robbie bring low-key erotic chemistry to an easy simmer in Focus, a smooth, sophisticated, often amusing little caper flick.

With “1982,” Mouaness gives viewers an immersive, ineffable sense of what it feels like to have the world shift under your feet before you even know it.

Ultimately, “Loving Highsmith” provides a valuable addition to the larger record of the author’s enigmatic life, rather than a comprehensive chronicle itself. Which might be altogether fitting for a woman who always seemed to prefer to remain just out of reach.

A film of modest ambition and workmanlike pacing, it breaks little new ground, either in form or content. Then again, that may be the point.

Nivola and Breslin make a terrific mismatched pair in a film that often resembles a mash-up of "Crazy Heart" and Sofia Coppola's "Somewhere," which may account for why it too often feels derivative and contrived.

Still, there’s no denying that the wise, funny, loving protagonists of Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets make for unforgettable company, even after the hangover has worn off.

Human Capital is a well made but ultimately rather facile tragedy for the globalized age of vertiginous wealth disparities. It’s suffused with beauty, guilt, regret and impunity that only the most obscenely overprivileged and dimly self-aware can hope to attain.

As in life, what drives most of the drama in this overstuffed but often thought-provoking movie is a failure to communicate.

Almereyda has done a splendid job of rendering Hamlet as expressive visually as it is verbally.

The characters in The Nice Guys often ask each other if they’re good or bad, a choice the movie doesn’t want to force the audience to make. Instead it settles for making good on the title, occupying the nice, mushy middle — perhaps unfocused and off-balance at times, but conveying a sense of buoyancy that’s as cheerfully contagious as it is freewheeling.

With its awkward reenactments and other stylistic clunkers, She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry doesn’t break much formal ground. But it serves as a moving reminder of how crucial citizen action is in fomenting social change.

An all-star revue of some of the most physically stunning actors working in Hollywood, Think Like a Man is a pleasure if only on a purely sensory level.

Did you find “The Favourite” just too weird, too raunchy, too . . . too? Perhaps Mary Queen of Scots will be more your cup.

It’s when the dream of “Annihilation” collides so felicitously with lived reality that the film coalesces and takes hold. It may be broken eventually, but for a while the spell is a powerful one, and nearly irresistible.

Unlike "Wild Hogs" or last summer's "The Expendables," this adaptation of the "Red" graphic novel series gets into a cool, sophisticated swing.

Mid90s” is often painful to watch as Stevie puts himself through the punishing rituals of proving his street bona fides. But Hill takes even the most treacherous dangers in stride, suffusing his story with as much tenderness as stark terror.

In the tradition of such bracing musicals as Kinky Boots, Billy Elliot and Prom, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie has exuberance to burn, high spirits galore and a brand of message-driven escapism that’s as insistent as it is worthy. Resistance, in other words, is futile.

Laggies possesses irrepressible cheer, optimism and an innate sense of ease that often go missing in angstier productions loosely organized under “Aging, fear of.” Unlike its sometimes annoyingly wishy-washy heroine, this is a movie that knows just where it’s going, and finds joy in the journey.

"Eat the rich” might be a popular theme this movie season, but The Menu takes the idea to extremes that finally overpower the palate.

I liked The Five-Year Engagement, and then I didn't, and then I did.

The story of the triumphant underdog is irresistible, even when every single plot point comes marching down Main Street.

Propelled by a lyrical, pulsing soundtrack of Colombian rock, hip-hop and bolero, Days of the Whale is less a character study, or even a love story than a vibrant study in swirling perpetual motion.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is often diverting to watch, and it’s been shot on 35mm film with lovingly expressive care by Robert Richardson. But true to its title, it plays like a bedtime story concocted by a petulant child who insists on getting his own back from the people who poisoned his most honeyed dreams.

Norton, who wrote and directed Motherless Brooklyn, does his best to imitate the genre’s snappy dialogue and clever red herrings; but what starts out as a mystery as intelligent as it is intriguing winds up being over-plotted didactic.

It’s a touching evocation of friendship, brotherly competition and artistic courage at the cusp of a new century.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl succumbs to the same cloying too-cuteness and solipsism that often plague its glib and sentimental genre. But those limitations are leavened by the film’s lively, ultimately affecting flourishes and sprightly voice.

It’s the chemistry among these three fine actors that keeps Going in Style afloat, lifting it from the formulaic and forgettable — which, essentially, it is — and making it genuinely, if modestly, enjoyable.

What makes The Tribe unforgettable is the filmmaker’s attention to composition and staging, with camera work by cinematographer Valentyn Vasyanovych that goes from implacable stasis to poetic fluidity with seamless, expressive ease.

If this strikes you as vaguely familiar, you’re right: Disconnect is a computer “Crash.”

Digging for Fire is a pleasant escape — an attractively shot, gracefully edited and, finally, emotionally satisfying mystery about the nature of marriage itself.

Even those who don’t buy in completely to Mundruczo’s parable will be impressed by his canine crowd scenes, staged with ambition, skill and genuinely original vision.

The Birth of a Nation is a flawed but fairly compelling chapter of the American story that powerfully resonates with how that story is playing out today.

The Monuments Men often lets the schematic gears show, succumbing to threadbare formula and sentimental cliches rather than taut, sophisticated drama.

In The Automat, Hurwitz and writer Michael Levine trace the rise and fall of Horn & Hardart, illuminating not just a surprisingly compelling corporate history, but a facet of American culture that feels both brimmingly optimistic and thoroughly extinct.

A movie made for critics, cinephiles and deep-dive film historians.

A bittersweet, elegiac tone can’t help but suffuse a film animated by so many anarchic spirits who have since left the planet, but it leaves viewers with the exhilarating, inspiring reassurance that we still have Iggy. To adopt his own highest praise: That’s cool.

Because it's by the Coens, The Big Lebowski is studded with visual and verbal jokes and flourishes, but ultimately they amount to pearls without a string. The Coens have thrown their considerable talents into making the world's smartest dumb movie, a dubious distinction that for their admirers will have to suffice, at least for now.

As a meticulously composed piece of contemporary gothic, The Duke of Burgundy is exquisite to look at, but it succeeds best as a human drama, and a searching investigation of how to ask for what you want — and maybe even getting it in the end.

Content to be sparkly when it should be sharp-edged and shrewd; it has the potential to roar like a lion, but instead it lays lambs at our feet.

Uneven, ambiguous and unnerving, “Sharp Stick” undoubtedly has a point to make. What that is, precisely, might be subject to debate.

For a movie so bent on skewering illusions, Ruby Sparks ultimately can't entirely let go of its own.

It's the kind of movie that succeeds as a culmination of moments that ring true and sweet.

While Sparkle doesn't give the audience a lasting memory of Houston's voice at its most soaring, it does manage to provide a lingering sense of loss, mixed with celebration and grim irony.

As cinema, Spy is content to cater to its own conventions, hit the required marks and earn a few laughs along the way. As a cultural bellwether, it does something bigger and more important, without ever italicizing that fact.

An improbably satisfying action comedy.

She Came to Me exists in between things: airy romance and psychological depth; operatic fantasy and gritty reality; farce and fatalism. Writer-director Rebecca Miller executes that balancing act with lighthearted audacity in a film that aspires, with fitful success, to resurrect the lost art of screwball comedy — with some literal opera thrown in for musical measure.

Friendship is primarily a movie for Robinson’s hardcore fans, but, for the Tim-curious, it serves as an amusing — if haphazard and uneven — introduction to his distinctive sensibility.

Even with the odd misgiving or two, The Grand Seduction will effortlessly charm anyone susceptible to an endearing story told with modesty, wit and unprepossessing sweetness.

As a showcase for Murray’s proven rapport with his audience, St. Vincent occasionally threatens to become a self-congratulatory victory lap. But as a celebration, it’s a chance to revel in the Murray personae — wiseacre, hipster, humble man of the street and hell of a nice guy — that has allowed him somehow to reach mass-media stardom while retaining his own idiosyncratic niche.

In The Conspirator, Wright announces in no uncertain terms that she is back and more than ready for her close-up.

Wilde is a worthy movie that, although helped considerably by Stephen Fry's bravura performance, never breaks out of its static, episodic structure. [05 Jun 1998]

A well-made, excruciating exercise in containment and sustained suspense. It's a breakout moment for Reynolds. Is it a fun hour and a half? No. But it succeeds within its own straitened contours. It's an intriguing squirm. Now, please get me outta here.

The Wolf of Wall Street remains one-note even at is most outré, an episodic portrait of rapaciousness in which decadence escalates into debauchery escalates into depravity — but, miraculously, not death.

Still, for all its attractively appointed torpor, Corsage offers a provocative retort to the fetishistic depictions of Elisabeth that have become commodified in Austria over the past 125 years. It tears open the candy box to reveal something poisonous at its center.

A surprisingly lush, endearing little film, in which a swelling sense of romanticism thoroughly banishes even the most far-fetched improbabilities.

As “Guardians” and, later, “Deadpool” doubled down on the snark, “Ant-Man” kept things light, its playfulness made all the more endearing by the boyish, twinkle-eyed persona of its star, Paul Rudd.

A bland also-ran in a post-"Sopranos" universe.

As he did in the first “Avengers,” writer-director Joss Whedon avoids the fatal trap of comic-book ­self-seriousness, leavening a baggy, busy, overpopulated story with zippy one-liners, quippy asides and an overarching tone of jaunty good fun.

No one will ever credit Snatched with discovering new comic territory. But it earns its share of laughs by covering some well-trod ground.

I’ll Be Me is an elevating experience, inviting the audience to bear witness to Campbell’s courage, humor and spiritual strength. His story may make for a tough movie, but it’s an important and triumphant one, as well.

Computer Chess makes an affecting preservationist plea, in this case for a visual and material culture that, while not objectively beautiful, possessed its own form of buttoned-down passion — before it became obsolete by taking over the world.

Regina King gives a lively, convincing portrayal of pioneering U.S. Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm in “Shirley,” an earnest, curiously listless biopic of a woman whose legacy suffuses modern life, even as it goes unacknowledged.

Like “The Revenant,” The Nightingale becomes something of a slog, as Clare’s journey plods toward its maybe-inevitable end.

Elle would be too clever by half — not to mention fatally offensive — were it not for Huppert, who in her portrayal of Michèle owns the movie from its opening moments to its bizarre, but not entirely surprising, denouement.

Money Monster, which is at its best when it’s at its most crisply realistic and timely, suffers from the kind of only-in-Hollywood plot twists and eye-rolling exaggeration that results in smarter than average pulp, but pulp nonetheless.

A high-low tension runs through Elysium, not only in the narrative itself, but in Blomkamp’s own cinematic language, which can be lofty one moment and gleefully pulpy the next.

As trite as Herself is in plot and emotional beats, what makes it worthwhile are the performances, which are all stellar.

The Souvenir Part II may bring an end to the introduction of a marvelous filmmaker to a wider world. But far more promisingly, it suggests what, with luck, will be an exhilarating next chapter.

About Last Night may be about Daniel and Debbie, but it’s Hart and Hall who make it worth watching. They take palatable but not exceptional cinematic hay and turn it into comic gold.

Although sweet and likable, Ricki and the Flash pulls too many punches to qualify as cathartic or even memorable. Instead, it’s a crowd-pleaser every bit as calculated and earnestly defanged as a Golden Oldies bus-and-truck tour.

Seemingly unable to engage in self-reflection, let alone self-criticism, Rumsfeld is given virtually full rein to control the narrative by Morris, who is far more interested in letting the audience dwell inside his subject’s strangely attenuated moral imagination, rather than challenge it.

Life, Animated makes fascinating points, about the power of cinema, about meeting our loved ones where they are and, as Ron says, about who gets to decide what constitutes a meaningful life.

If Kunis gets the showier role in Friends With Benefits, Timberlake proves a quietly charming stalking horse, finally claiming and fully owning the spotlight with a hilarious homage to the 1990s rap duo Kriss Kross.

Sadly, Herge isn't around to see The Adventures of Tintin, Spielberg's crisp, richly rendered animated adaptation, which could be counted as both a success and a failure. Spielberg has brought Tintin to the big screen all right, but not quite to life.

Kasdan has assembled a stellar cast of supporting players to lend this low-key tale some interest.

For all its savagery and hopelessness, Starred Up manages to be sympathetic, not only because of O’Connell’s galvanizing turn, but also Asser and director David Mackenzie’s unwavering commitment to portraying his character with as much compassion as brutal honesty.

The story is a familiar one — a young immigrant fetches up in New York to seek his fortune, only to be buffeted by a bumptious city and cut to the quick by its competitive edge — but Torres reshapes it into something simultaneously more fantastical and far more real.

True to its title, as well as its flawed but sympathetic protagonist, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is more confused than cynical or opportunistic. Its bewilderment is contagious, and ultimately endearing.

The Ides of March is cynical when, with political figures and institutions at all-time lows in public opinion, cynicism is the last thing we need; worse, that cynicism isn't spiked with any new or incisive insight.

If viewers are left feeling just as impotent as many of the characters, that may be precisely what Jolie intended for a film that asks nothing more of its audience than to bear witness.

This isn't your father's Stuart Little, but youngsters will be delighted. Mostly.

Top it off with Pinaud’s final dedication, and The Rose Maker turns into a film that wears its emotions lightly but generously, like dew on a blush-colored petal.

What begins as an intriguing visit to a forbidding but fascinating past becomes the kind of perfunctorily moralistic fairy tale that Kahlen himself might scoff at, before getting back to work. Like the wilderness it depicts, this is a movie that ultimately might not want to be tamed.

It’s that rare fish-out-of-water story in which the fish miraculously manages to stop needing water, and learns to crave air instead.

The Old Man and the Gun ambles along with such unhurried, folksy ease that it’s easy to overlook the people — mostly women — Tucker leaves in his wake, victims who may not be physically scarred, but often look as if they will bear unseen injuries into the future nonetheless.

The oddball grief drama Demolition proves that an actor who could easily be dismissed as just another watchable face is actually possessed of subtle, fascinatingly protean chops.

Has a sweetness to it that's irresistible, and its techno, trance and jungle soundtrack is as infectious and hypnotic as a contact high.

Not nearly as accomplished narratively as it is visually.

Mississippi Grind winds up being an improbably satisfying, even heartwarming character study.

Even at its most contrived, The Hero exerts a soothing attraction not unlike the man at its center.

The dynamic between Fletcher and Andrew makes for highly pitched drama, which strains for credibility during two climactic scenes.

Larky, witty and sometimes even wise, this spoof on every rom-com ever made is less a fully realized film than an extended skit, a series of set pieces that poke gentle and sometimes transgressively crude fun at the tropes of girl-meets-boy that have enchanted and addled audiences for generations.

For the first hour and a half, WW84 is a delightful flight of escapist fancy, with Diana and Steve's love story ensconcing itself comfortably, if a bit talkily, within the confines of an action adventure. Then, at the 90 minute mark, it’s as if Jenkins remembers her other deliverables, in the form of special effects, epic global crises and a plotty, ever-more-muddled story line that metastasizes into something much darker and more violent.

Too sketchy about her protagonist's interior life, and too fast and loose with the details of this story, to make much of an impact beyond its initial shock.

1917 is impressive but oddly distancing; ultimately stirring but too often gimmicky.

As nervy and well-made as it is, Cherry feels less personal than pageant-like, especially in a rushed and glibly perfunctory final sequence. It unfolds like an American dream that becomes a nightmare, before switching back again — just before we wake up and shake the whole thing off.

This dazzling, if ultimately frustrating, movie seems to pick up where the far superior “Inside Out” ended, leaving behind the inner workings of young people’s emotional lives for an exploration of metaphysical realms that are fuzzier, more speculative and, to put it bluntly, not nearly as involving.

As impressive as Dogman often is — not only with Fonte’s Chaplin-esque lead performance, a bleakly evocative setting and moments of winsome humor but with a standout canine ensemble — it never quite delivers on its initial promise.

Provides an arresting journey through the Japanese countryside and culture.

Hip, lurid and improbably lovable, The Guard is easily the best guy-love comedy of the summer, with Cheadle and Gleeson's riffs and repartee tumbling back and forth as if they've been trading lies over Guinness forever.

Admittedly, Niccol succumbs to the temptation to make mini-billboards out of his dialogue, in which arguments follow neat “on the one hand” trajectories. But for the most part, Good Kill asks pertinent, enduring questions, not by way of polemic, but through the study of a character.

It’s all meticulously conceived and impressively staged, but becomes repetitive and monotonous, devolving for anyone not completely steeped in the “Dune” universe into a hazy orange-and-ocher soup of dust, smoke, flames and sand.

Keeps filmgoers wondering what will happen next even as they are repulsed by what's happening in front of them.

The Meddler is a movie of modest charms.

Eventually — perhaps inevitably — Yesterday overplays its hand, with Curtis seemingly at a loss for how to resolve a story that, after its initial premise has been mined for maximum humor and poignancy, has very few places to go.

As inventive as The Laundromat is as an information vector, though, its semi-ironic tone is at odds with the content at hand: This is a movie that often feels like it’s fighting itself, asking viewers to be charmed by Oldman and Banderas’s characters one moment, and — maybe? — outraged the next.

It’s funny and sad and weary and wise, which feels just about right for now. War Machine is a weird, unsettled movie for a weird, unsettled time.

There are moments in Dina that invite viewers to wonder whether Santini and Sickles aren’t veering into voyeurism, such as when Dina presents Scott with a copy of “The Joy of Sex” and proceeds to have a conversation about masturbation and other matters.

The beauty of Indignation can be found in how it builds, growing from a garden-variety coming-of-age story into a poetic, even prayerful, meditation on the pitiless vagaries of character and regret. Thoughtful and reserved, perhaps even to a fault, Indignation winds up packing a wallop far greater than its modest parts might suggest.

If the film’s pace is sometimes as awkward as its hero, and the story a little thin, it still brims with authentic life and affection for the characters (even the dubiously attentive Katrin).

Ends up being more about her hair (Meg Ryan's) than anything else.

All Good Things is creepy and weird and sad, and little else.

If the series's legions of fans miss a detail here or a sub-plot there, they'll still recognize its bones and sinew, especially in Jennifer Lawrence's eagle-eyed heroine Katniss Everdeen.

Roald Dahl’s beloved ad­ven­ture tale about a brave little girl who befriends the titular Big Friendly Giant, finds Steven Spielberg in his natural element of childlike enchantment, yet also strangely out of step, his trusted sense of narrative propulsion and pacing occasionally failing him in a saggy, draggy second act.

The best reason to see 44 Inch Chest is simply to behold some of the finest actors working today, especially Winstone -- who can embody winsomeness and menace in one sweaty, unkempt glance -- and the woefully underemployed Dillane.

Although Sheridan has approached the setting with the sensitivity and respect of his deeply empathic protagonist, the film still bears a slight but inescapable whiff of cultural tourism.

As a family-approved document, In Her Own Words is celebratory rather than probing, critical or comprehensive.

The conflicts, magic spells, chase sequences and reconciliations feel strangely by-the-book for a studio so well known for throwing the book out entirely.

True to the profession it sets out to glamorize, The Accountant takes advantage of its share of creative loopholes — and manages to break even in the process.

Creed II is a respectable if not revelatory sequel to the sequel, even if it lacks its predecessor’s grace and narrative texture.

Despite small but powerful gestures in the finale, it leaves the audience feeling just as immobilized and powerless as its characters. Labaki chose the title Capernaum because the word was often used to mean “chaos” in French literature. That’s precisely what she presents to us, with precious little relief in sight.

All too often the plot feels calculated rather than organic, the result of a time-tested formula rather than genuine innovation.

For better or worse, though, this adaptation of the mega-hit Broadway musical fits neither description, largely because it lives in that kinda-sorta, okay-not-great, this-worked-that-didn't in-between for which words like "better" and "worse" fall woefully short.

Structurally, The Wonders suffers from awkward bulges and sags, especially toward the end. Still, it’s a beautiful, richly imagined ride that doesn’t end as much as evaporate into a dreamlike puff of smoke.

Both simplistic and overcomplicated, Us depends on some of horror’s most hackneyed cliches and gaps in logic — by now, shouldn’t all movie characters know never to go back into the house and to always stay together? — as well as a few windy speeches explaining why bizarre things keep happening. The viewer begins to wish that Peele had given his script one more pass, either to pare it down or beef it up.

The Walk satisfies as an absorbing yarn of authority-flouting ad­ven­ture and as an example of stomach-flipping you-are-there-ness. The journey it offers viewers doesn’t just span 140 feet, but also an ethereal, now-vanished, world.

What turns out to be the most moving and meaningful thing about the film isn’t the song at its center, but the work ethic of a man who might have disappeared from the public eye for years at a time but never stopped sweating every word.

It’s a credit to Lehane’s screenplay, director Michael R. Roskam’s restraint and a superb cast led by the masterful Tom Hardy that “The Drop” earns every sad-eyed glance and heart-tugging whimper.

Has the sentiment and sweetness of a good coming-of-age movie but lacks the drive and pulse that makes for a great rock and roll movie.

Everyone hits their marks with gusto and believability in Catching Fire... But the engine of the entire operation is Jennifer Lawrence.

The film can be appreciated, if only as a showcase for its assured, emotional attuned performances, as a convincing time capsule and period piece, and as a chance to reconsider one of the more well-known and still-influential studies of its era.

By no stretch is this a disaster on a par with Lucas’s misbegotten prequel trilogy. Still, at least until its final section, Rogue One lacks the zip, zing and exhilarating sense of return to form that “The Force Awakens” conveyed so lightly.

Features one of the best endings in recent movie memory — and as we all know, endings are the hardest. If it takes some predictable twists and turns to get there, well then, accept it and move on.

Dinner for Schmucks has already raised hackles in the Yiddish-speaking community for the breathtakingly offensive epithet in its title (and it's not "dinner"). But it turns out that this comedy of humiliation, starring Paul Rudd and Steve Carell, isn't nearly as off-putting as it might have been.

Wild is an accomplished movie, and often a beautiful and moving one, but the woman at its center remains warily at arm’s length.

Can be recommended even if just for the presence of Elaine May, who turns in her most charmingly ditzy performance since "A New Leaf."

To his credit, Gunn pushes a much-needed reset button on “Superman,” banishing shadows and pretentious self-seriousness in favor of a bright palette, brisk storytelling and occasional jolts of bracing humor.